Concept identification in object-oriented domain analysis: why some students just don't get it

Anyone who has taught object-oriented domain analysis or any other software process requiring concept identification has undoubtedly observed that some students just don't get it. Our evaluation of the work of over 740 University of Waterloo students on over 135 software requirements specifications during the last four years supports this same observation. The students' task was to specify a telephone exchange or a voice-over-IP telephone system and the related accounts management subsystem, based on models they developed using object-oriented analysis. A detailed comparative study of three much smaller specifications, all of an elevator system, suggests that object orientation is poorly suited to domain analysis, even of small-sized domains, and that the difficulties we have observed are independent both of the size of the system under specification and of the overall abilities of the students.